April 11, 2023 • 32 mins
When most of us think of toys, we fondly recall moments from childhood, or think of toys we gifted to loved ones over the years. Yet toys are a serious, big business -- and, more than once, they played a vital role in Japan's postwar economy. In part one of this week's special two-part episode, Ben, Noel and Max explore the amazing story of master toymaker Matsuzo Kosuge.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Today we're talking about toys and toys
r I don't know about you guys, but Noel super producer,
mister Max Williams. What were your some of your favorite
toys growing up? I'm Ben by the way, Hey Ben,
it's all here. I thought I thought you were gonna
(00:49):
say toys are us, and I would have agreed with you.
I missed toys r us. I missed the big box
toy stores that I used to get to go to
after I did get at my violin lesson my papa. Yeah,
well Kabe was more of a mall institution, but like,
yeah it was. It was I just for me growing up.
It was the brightly colored like it looked like it
(01:10):
was made of sticks of plato or like clay, like multicolored,
you know, different sticks, and it was the it was
the toys are us and um, if I did well
on my violin lesson, I would get to get a
Ninja Turtle action figure. And I distinctly remember, just like
we kind of have vague memories of like the price
of gas from a bygone era. I remember those figures
(01:32):
were four ninety nine. Yeah, I remember that too. You
could get a really good action figure for those I would,
you know, be indoctrinated in the very pro military things
like g I Joe. I loved being able to go there.
I also remember there was Fao Schwartz, which I didn't
vibe with as much as a child. I thought those
(01:53):
were toy stores for parents who wanted to buy toys
they wanted their kids to like. Oh yeah, And I
remember going to the New York one when I was
a kid, visiting my mom when she was working, and
also the way I think it was home alone too
lost in New York. It was an Fao Schwartz esque
type toy store. You know where he got the doves
(02:14):
or what are the turtle doves? But it wasn't exactly
it wasn't actually called that. It was called like Duncan's
Toy Chest or something. And toy stores toys in general,
I think hold a special place in most people's hearts.
A lot of people, especially when you're very young, you
might have a toy you get attached to. Sometimes we
still have toys in our grown live shout out to
(02:35):
our intern Steve, who is a puppet on camera now.
But we're an audio podcast. You'll have to take our
word for it. Today we're talking about toys. We're also
talking about there's another toy nols holding. We're talking about
World War Two. We're talking about Japan because I'll tell you,
even as an adult, you guys, Japan and Korea make
the most amazing toys. I catch myself looking at him online.
(02:57):
You know, absolutely, I mean, you know, certainly when we
were maybe a little older, probably pasted our Ninja Turtles phase,
but not much things like Power Rangers, you know, complete
Japanese exports that just kind of took America by storm,
and then those action figures became massively popular, not to
mention things like Pokemon and all. I'm down the line,
but we'll get there. Yeah, And along the way, we're
(03:19):
going to find that the toy industry was not played
around when it came to the Japanese economy. They actually
the toy industry played a huge role in resuscitating the
postwar Japanese economy. And I guess our story really starts
with a guy named Matsuzo cosuj. Absolutely, this is a
(03:42):
monumental figure, not an action figure, a human figure in
the toy explosion that Japan experienced after a different explosion
that we'll also talk about it. You may know what
we're hinting at there, but let's let's not get to
Kosuge right away. Let's talk a little bit more about
Japan's history with leisure goods and design. You know, any
(04:05):
any any folks out there who were super into Japanese
culture probably are aware of things like bento boxes, you know,
these beautifully little kind of very organized ergonomic displays for
your lunch. You know, where there's little compartments for every
little thing. Like Japan has always had a flare for
design and for like layout and for aesthetics. And when
(04:26):
the US sort of entered Japan, they expected to see,
not that they expected to see something maybe they experienced
in other examples of kind of colonization, you know, maybe
more what what Americans at the time would were colonizing
forces usually describe as backwards civilizations. But instead they found society,
(04:49):
but not only could meet its citizens needs, you know,
daily needs for shelter and food and clothing and all
of that stuff in safety, but also fun little leisure items,
little treasures. Yeah, and this comes to us from Gary
Cross and Gregory Smitz, who wrote a piece called Japan,
the US and the Globalization of Children's consumer culture. What
(05:11):
we're saving, folks, is this esthetic has roots that go
way past, you know, way past the cool little toys
you might see in a store today. And in fact,
these authors say quote boxes, both metaphoric and literal, define
Japanese material culture. They talked about the bento box, as
(05:32):
you mentioned. They also talk about things like the limitations
of literary forms the haiku right three lines of five,
seven and five, and of course yes there are multiple
versions of haiku, but that's the most popular format. And
then they talked about the art of wrapping something and
how the esthetics of a presentation can be as important
(05:54):
as the object itself. You see this reflected too in
things like the traditional ta seram pimonies and the ways
in which a gift might be given in an envelope
or box so elaborate, so impressive, that might actually be
worth more than the contents within the box. And if
you look at this, you see that Western artists began
(06:16):
to pick up on this in the late nineteenth century,
and it triggered some important questions about aesthetics and design.
You know, Whistler van Go all sorts of artists really
got into the artwork of Japanese creators, and they thought
of this as a way of freeing themselves from European style,
(06:36):
which they found a little stuffy stayed and you know,
it's the art we have at home, so let's do
something different. And before long the Japanese esthetics and cultural
norms began to be associated with the very definition of culture.
And you can see this in everything from stationary to
(06:59):
find art, to textiles to fabric honestly all sorts of stuff.
But while Western tastemakers, the influencers of their day were
all about these prints and these glassware pieces and so on,
the real backbone of Japan's growing export industry was toys.
(07:22):
And this, I mean, we're still not even the World
War two. The it's it's pretty nuts to think about
how popular these were. It is it is, and it's
also just nuts in general to think of something that
you know, we as adults, I guess, with our loss
of wonder and all of that that comes with becoming
a boring old adults, something that we might view as frivolous,
(07:43):
like toys, you know, could have such an impact so
early on, you know, you don't even really think of that,
I mean early toys. It's almost like we think of
them as like being made like in the home, or
like just hear a kid play with this stick, you
know what I mean. But it was like they kind
of had cracked the coat on this, as as had
the Germans. You know, Germans were really known for their
engineering and their craftsmanship, and the quality of German toys
(08:07):
were already very much a thing, and you know there
was an awareness around them in Japan, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah.
The way that Matt Alts puts it, in pure invention
is Germany, the Uniting Kingdom in France were in this
three way race to be the number one supplier, giving
(08:28):
the children of the world dolls, rocking horses, and cast
iron soldiers and alt says. Japan watched all this with envy,
and was the cost of World War One that gave
Japan this opening to create their own international export market,
because you know, World War one kind of rough for
European industry, and European toy production was no exception. So
(08:52):
the entire industry tanked during World War One because people
were tried to survive, and in Japan and Britain were
actually allied at the time, correct, that's correct. Yeah, And
because they were allies, Japan's leaders saw this European conflict
as an opportunity to advance their nation in the global order.
(09:19):
They declared war on Germany and Austria nineteen fourteen. And
even though they declared war, the Japanese military didn't do
much more than get rid of some small German garrisons
that were on some islands in the South Pacific, and
then they took over some German occupied territory in China.
Throughout most of the war, Japan devoted its attention to
(09:42):
manufacturing stuff ammunition, uniforms, other staple goods, and they made
bank with us too. Absolutely, they did, like we were saying,
it really was an economic boom, you know, for the
whole country. This was not an insignificant industry at the
very least the beginnings of one. And as we said before,
somewhat inspired by you know, the quality of German toys.
(10:04):
And actually, you know, I've mentioned on the show that
I was once a young German boy and when I
was growing up in Germany, I do remember having really
fine wooden toys and you know, things like a playmobile.
It's a really popular that was obviously later, but it
really was a cultural thing. In Japan was able to
kind of carry that forward and include their own cultural touchdoones,
(10:25):
which will get to in a bit as well. That
wartime reduction and competition allowed some Japanese manufacturers to produce,
to kind of scale their operations right, and then the
value at this point in nineteen fourteen of all Japanese
toy exports tripled, and then in nineteen sixteen it tripled again.
(10:45):
Between nineteen sixteen nineteen twenty, about twenty one million yen
was sort of the cap of that industry. There was
a particular popular kind of breed of toys or flavor
of toys called celluloid toys, which became Japan's thirteenth and
most valuable export commodity during those war years. And this
(11:08):
also comes from Japan the US and the globalization of
childre's consumer culture by Gary Cross and Gregory Smith's and
if we go back to pure invention by Matt Alt,
we see that there's a pretty cool snapshot we can
take from the nineteen fifteen Panama Pacific International Exposition out
in San Francisco. They had tons of like roly Polly,
(11:31):
paper mache, Daruma dolls, miniature paper umbrellas, celluloid figures. Celluloid
figures were one of the biggest export commodities during the
war years for Japan, and they were toys, and they
also had very exquisite, opulent, just so porcelain dolls from
toymakers in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya. The Japanese government really
(11:56):
leaned into this and they wanted to show off Japanese
toys as this not only the new hot thing for
people in the know, but also as an example of
Japan's manufacturing acumen their abilities, and so they would they
would treat this like a piece of diplomacy, and they
were actually able to leap frog Western toy manufacturers by
(12:20):
making new things that were way lower in price because
at the time labor was way cheaper in Japan. Yeah,
and this is something that we've always kind of known
to some degree over here in the States, you know,
made in China, made in Japan. A lot of the
consumer goods that we rely on or just kind of
(12:41):
enjoy have historically been made overseas because of that labor disparity,
you know. And yeah, so for instance, a skilled Japanese
manufacturer toymaker would earn maybe in an entire day, what
an American toymaker would be paid per hour. And US
(13:03):
toy companies got a little bit shook about this. A
matter of fact, in nineteen thirty four, they asked Uncle
Sam for tariffs. They said, we need your help to quote,
stem the invasion of the American market by Japanese toys.
So when they can't get lang, yeah, when they couldn't
compete fairly, they said, okay, you know, cut off the race.
(13:26):
Does the word invasion? You know, they seem a little
mothering and kind of I could picture some crass imagery
associated with a campaign like that, if I'm using my
gross American imagination. Yeah, and there's renewed German competition two right.
At least around this time, Japanese manufacturers also say, hey,
(13:49):
we can't just make a bunch of stuff. We need
to make quality products. And in nineteen twenty seven, the
Ministry of Education in Japan issued a statement saying that
Japanese toys and picture books were inferior to those of
other countries, and they made a commission to investigate and
recommend improvements. That's right in a book called kongu' sorry
(14:14):
Apologies not Japanese native speaker Kanju, perhaps to Kodomo no Kayoku,
which translates to Toys and Children's education. An education professor
at Toyo University named seki Hiroyuki agreed with this assessment,
saying that Japanese children were kind of lagging behind in
(14:35):
their ability to think creatively. Let's just call it like
outside the box. And he said part of the reason
was because of these kind of shoddy toys that were
being made in the country, Because he said, the industry
at this point was pretty much just content like making
kind of knockoffs of some of these other toys that
were coming from other countries, which weren't particularly creative or
(14:58):
mentally stimulating. Right, Yeah, So he said, I said, I
think the kids aren't doing well, and I blame their toys.
That's part of it. And this meant that from the
nineteen twenties on, Japanese toymakers increasingly looked at themselves in
a very serious light. They said, we're not distracting children.
(15:19):
What we're doing is providing a key piece of childhood
development and education. Therefore, don't call us, you know, dollmakers.
We're not just engineers of action figures. We're engineers of
Japan's future, which is a really cool way to look
at it. Yeah, and proved to be quite accurate. You know. Obviously,
(15:40):
we know things like Nintendo and a lot of these
other kind of brands they come out of Japan that
were you know, just took the world by storm, many
of them, like Nintendo, for example. I've always said, and
I think a lot of people agree and say as well,
that they don't need the best graphics in the world.
They don't need to have PS five or Xbox three
(16:00):
six or whatever. The newest Xbox is level graphics because
the design of the games so perfect, so well put together,
and just purely fun. It all comes from this sort
of spirit of design and creativity that we're starting to
see kind of flourish here. I mean, the Nintendo we
is always going to have a special place in my
(16:21):
heart because it's where I played one of the most
beautiful games I've ever played, Okami. Please to check it out, folks.
It's odd, it's so good. I still play the old
school Nintendo games. Yeah, there's there's definitely something to be
said there. You don't have to make a thing very
complicated for it to be beautiful and fund and compelling. However,
(16:46):
you may have heard us allude to wars folks, and
you know, at the time all of this stuff was happening,
they didn't call it World War One. They just called
it the World War and hoped it would never happen again.
There's a key tip to you if you become a
time traveler. Don't give the war's numbers. You'll give yourself away.
(17:06):
Japan again is wrapped up in World War two, right,
and the end of war population in Japan is two
point eight million compared with six point seven million in
nineteen forty. Tokyo is devastated, you know, the atomic bomb
(17:27):
is dropped, massive industries are laid to waste. And this
is where the guy would tease. At the very top,
Matsuzo Kosuja comes into play. Forgive pronunciation. We're not native speakers.
Let's talk a little bit about him. He's born in
eighteen ninety nine in Intifu, which is northeast of Hakaido.
(17:50):
Hakaido is the big the big deally Bop at the
top of Japan. I've been there quite recently. It is.
When I was there, snow was like up to two
feet in places. Yeah, it's it's cold. It's very cold.
It's like if you have contact lenses overnight and you
don't put them somewhere warm, your contact lenses might freeze
(18:14):
in their containers. That's how cold. No, and but and
make sure you realize that before you shove those things
in your eyeballs. I imagine. Yeah, And it's it's an
island that I'd never heard of. I think the name
a Toro food is just I don't know, it's beautiful
for some reason, maybe we kind of think of of
a magical land, and that apparently it was. It was
very much off of the radar until the late seventeenth
(18:34):
century when you started to see it showing up on
maps due to a kind of turf war between I knew,
Japanese and Russian uh you know, factions, I guess, for
control over the territory. It was remote, but it also
was strategically located. It had deep, fertile waters surrounding it,
(18:54):
so it was a good place, you know, for war.
It was a good strategic place to say, you know,
court an imperial carrier fleet which happened in November of
nineteen forty one. That fleet is the one that set
sail for Pearl Harbor. As it turns out, we're not
going to get too into the weeds here because we
need to talk about how our hero became the hero
(19:16):
that we know. Yeah, he definitely was witnessing this with
those authors called a tug of war, and you can
still see it today if you go to rural parts
of Kaido, you go to the islands off hug Kaido.
Russia and Japan both claim them, and it's not uncommon
to see stuff in a couple languages Japanese Russian than English.
(19:39):
So he knows about this stuff. And there's a quote
that stood out that says, over years of tutelage from
elder craftsman, Kasuge mastered the largely unglamorous elements of the
toy trade. So he's learning from the bottom, right. He
has to learn blueprints, planning, how to fit and souder stuff,
(20:00):
how to paint and print designs, and the most important
thing for him to learn was the molds, these chunks
of cold steel that you have to hand tool to
make sheets of tin into the specific shapes for each product.
These are the main hearts. They're the engine of any
tin toy workshop. And so in nineteen twenty two, this
(20:22):
guy's only twenty three years old, he makes his own company,
the Kasuga Toy Manufacturing Company. Nobody's sure exactly how he
got all the resources in the capital he needed to
go independent, but we know that it was tough to
do so because apparently back in the day, if you
were an apprentice to one of these established toymakers, the
(20:46):
only way you could go independent is to work for
your master for a full year without pay and then
maybe they would let you go. Labor laws still had
you know, a work in progress, so you know, we
(21:07):
talked about kind of the handmade, sort of inspired quality
of these toys, and that is exactly, you know, how
he wanted it, Howcasuge wanted it. His company was really
more of like a creative workspace, you know, a creative
environment for developing ideas and building these these things, rather
than the feeling, will say, a factory, and all of
(21:29):
the people that worked there had that kind of same
you know, spirit of inspiration. So there's a lot of
experimenting going on a lot of like you know, trying
new creative ideas. But also you know, they were this
was a business, and they were tending to kind of
have the stuff be able to scale and to sell wholesale.
But then were they so were they like outsourcing their
(21:51):
manufacturing to some degree or like was it all handmade?
It gets a little a little confusing there. Yeah, it
seems like at least a few cases they were kind
of manufacturing the proof of concept or ideas and then
they would I think they played around with approaches, honestly,
and as well as playing around with toy concepts. Sometimes
(22:12):
they would build things to the specifications of these wholesalers.
And then sometimes they would make something that they thought
was really cool but they didn't have the you know,
the manpower to produce, and they would take this prototype,
this proof of concept around to other companies and see
if they could get those companies to pony up for it.
So they're they're like almost like an imprint pitching to
(22:35):
a bigger label. Yeah, I guess that's pretty common actually
with smaller kind of startups too, or like, you know,
you don't always necessarily be hell even with larger companies,
you know, you're sending your designs overseas to be manufactured
or perhaps like you know, the the supply chain you know,
may well be in a different country, and then you
have to send your designs and specifications in a way
(22:57):
that the other, you know, company can then manufacture of
the stuff for you. And I guess it's not until
you get really really, really really massive, too big to
fail massive, that you maybe like own all your own
means of production. So it's all of this tracks. And
he had competitors. We talked about Germany as a German
company called Shuko that created kind of the gold standard
(23:17):
for like clockwork wind up toys, and he really dug
this stuff. He was he had a really great eye
for quality and for creativity, and he loved the work
of a lot of his competitors. But he was not
going to be satisfied with just copying them. That was
never going to be his thing. He even said or
told his employees that he that our whole deal here,
(23:41):
our business here is to make our own designs. Reminds
me of a modern equivalent, you know, in the country
of folks like Hideo Kajima, you know, very very hands
on thinker, kind of forward thinking individuals who have a
very hands on day to day relationship with their company
and with their products. I think his studio ghibli as well.
This is something that really those commonalities stand out. Yeah,
(24:05):
he was on the front lines, took a personal hand
in every single project, and he dreamed up all sorts
of stuff. Some of it was clearly based on day
to day life, like he had a crawling clockwork baby.
Other things were anthropomorphized circus seals, dancing animals. He created
(24:27):
the world's first mass produced toy robot. It was a
boxy pin man named Lilliput, you know, like in Gulliver's Travels,
And his favorite thing automobiles. He loved love making toy autos, Jeeps, sedans,
you name it. He would say, yes, Well, because because
(24:47):
car culture was really becoming kind of mainstreamed at this point, right, Like,
you know, there was a fascination with all things automotive,
you know, I mean, I know you've studied this history
on cars, you know, back back in the day, I
was wondering, like how attractive was that, you know, in
a country like Japan, where I think cars were not
(25:08):
nearly adopted in the same way that they were in
the States. But they were kind of like this, you know,
shiny object that was being seen from afar. It's very cool,
it was very futuristic. It was seen as you know,
the way you would look at a private jet almost.
It's it's a really neat thing. You're right. There were
only sixteen hundred private cars registered in all of Tokyo
(25:32):
in the nineteen thirties nineteen thirty three. And to see
these vehicles, you it would be like you are seeing
something straight out of science fiction. So of course they're
great toys for kids. And you can just imagine how
excited a kid would be if they've played with a
toy blue Streak Sedan right for a few years and
(25:54):
they later see one on the streets of Japan. It's nuts.
It's like when you're a kid go to Disney and
you all of a sudden see the real Uh, what's
a good one? The real Simba, the real Mickey Mouse?
Why not Goofy is definitely one of these kids are
after that? Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, I love the
real the idea of the real for sure. Uh. And
(26:16):
and again, Disney is another company that has always painstakingly
controlled every little aspect of their brand you know, and
when you go to a Disney theme park you kind
of feel that same um, that same energy, you know.
And you know, I can't speak specifically, but the timing
for Disney being created and a lot of this like
(26:36):
Japanese kind of precision work that even inspired like artists
like Whistler for example, you know, to kind of like
take a step back from some of their classical roots
and maybe be a little more focused on kind of
this like kind of esthetic kind of quality, you know,
of design rather than you know, form over function kind
of I would I would argue that that Walt Disney
(26:58):
had to have been aware of this stuff. Yeah, and
you know, it didn't take long before people in the
toy industry in Japan and the world started calling Matsuzo.
They called him Kosuji the Carman, Cosi the Carman. By
nineteen thirty five, he was kind of a big deal.
He could still pretend it was a little shop, but
(27:20):
he was employing two hundred people. These became the top
ten smiths in all of Tokyo. They played a big
part in making Japan the world's second biggest toymaker, and
most of these toys were not staying in the country.
They were being exported all the way to the United
(27:41):
States and the UK. Again, this was starting to really
be the version of what we've been describing and promising
all along, you know, where this is really becoming a
massive export. It became a very popular phenomenon with its
own identity, right, Like, it's not just the Japanese are
producing a cheaper, more accessible version of something else that's
(28:02):
already out there. Sure they're toys, but they weren't copying anybody.
They were creating something completely new that was based on creativity, design,
and kind of reading the room, you know, globally in
terms of what would be popular. You know, I love that.
I think it's a really inspiring thing to read. Yeah,
and their neck and neck with Germany. For a while,
(28:25):
Japan was poised to become the number one toymaker in
the world, but in nineteen thirty eight, the Japanese economy
ground to a halt. They had to pumpets breaks. The
protests over Japan's invasion of China and the atrocities they
were committing led to a lot of economic sanctions that
(28:48):
had a huge impact on the country. The Prime Minister said, look,
we're going to build a new order in East Asia.
Parliament past the National Mobilization Law, which gave gave the
ruling structure, the Prime minister the ability to set prices,
put in rations, and draft people into forced labor. This
(29:08):
was the end of democratic rule in Japan. The whole
nation went to war. What's the toymaker to do? We'll
talk about turning the clock back, you know, or the
the clockwork toy back, you know. I mean, this is guy,
but we have to have been such a heartbreaking letdown
for Cousuga, who is all about inclusivity, you know, who's
all about like reaching out into the global world, you know,
(29:30):
outside of Japan, and now all of a sudden getting
pulled back into that, into this isolation, you know. And
and then to me, I mean again, maybe I'm romanticizing
this guy a little bit, but to me it feels
almost like, yeah, sure, there's there's money, and there's there's
business to be considered, but I don't know, this guy
just could that really just wanted to spread like joy,
(29:50):
you know, as far as he possibly could, someone who
was driven by inspiration just as much as as monetization. Yeah,
And the authorities ordered Kusuge to stop making toys. They said,
take your presses, retool them so that you can help
the warfare. We need you to stamp out casinges for
bomb fuses instead. And the streets get plastered with signs
(30:13):
saying stuff like luxuries the enemy, and housewives are getting
shamed in public for getting their hair done, for like
getting perms. So how could you make toys at a
time like this? And they took down the sign that
said toy manufacturing. They put up another sign that said
precision fabrication, just to you know, to go with the
(30:37):
flow for the company to survive. And a lot of terrible,
horrific things happen in World War Two. Ultimately, Japan's surrenders
in August of nineteen forty five. Kasuge stays put. There's
not much of a Tokyo to go back to. He
can't return home because the Soviet Union has taken over
(30:59):
these disputed islands in Hokkaido, and Kyoto was Japan's only
metro center still standing. So that's where he sets up
christ j Toy Works, and holy smokes, it happened again.
We are going to have to make this tin type
car ride a two parter. It's going to be an
(31:21):
audio road trip, because Noel, the story is just too interesting.
An audio road trip in tiny vehicles. I'm totally okay
with that. In the meantime, thanks to research associate extraordinaires
Zach Doctor, z Williams, Jonathan Strickland, the Christ Ever mayhe Rain,
and thanks of course to Alex Williams. Thanks to Eves Jeff,
(31:41):
thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, thanks to you for tuning in,
and Noel, Thank you man. It's been a pleasure. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from My
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Today we're talking about toys and toys
r I don't know about you guys, but Noel super producer,
mister Max Williams. What were your some of your favorite
toys growing up? I'm Ben by the way, Hey Ben,
it's all here. I thought I thought you were gonna
(00:49):
say toys are us, and I would have agreed with you.
I missed toys r us. I missed the big box
toy stores that I used to get to go to
after I did get at my violin lesson my papa. Yeah,
well Kabe was more of a mall institution, but like,
yeah it was. It was I just for me growing up.
It was the brightly colored like it looked like it
(01:10):
was made of sticks of plato or like clay, like multicolored,
you know, different sticks, and it was the it was
the toys are us and um, if I did well
on my violin lesson, I would get to get a
Ninja Turtle action figure. And I distinctly remember, just like
we kind of have vague memories of like the price
of gas from a bygone era. I remember those figures
(01:32):
were four ninety nine. Yeah, I remember that too. You
could get a really good action figure for those I would,
you know, be indoctrinated in the very pro military things
like g I Joe. I loved being able to go there.
I also remember there was Fao Schwartz, which I didn't
vibe with as much as a child. I thought those
(01:53):
were toy stores for parents who wanted to buy toys
they wanted their kids to like. Oh yeah, And I
remember going to the New York one when I was
a kid, visiting my mom when she was working, and
also the way I think it was home alone too
lost in New York. It was an Fao Schwartz esque
type toy store. You know where he got the doves
(02:14):
or what are the turtle doves? But it wasn't exactly
it wasn't actually called that. It was called like Duncan's
Toy Chest or something. And toy stores toys in general,
I think hold a special place in most people's hearts.
A lot of people, especially when you're very young, you
might have a toy you get attached to. Sometimes we
still have toys in our grown live shout out to
(02:35):
our intern Steve, who is a puppet on camera now.
But we're an audio podcast. You'll have to take our
word for it. Today we're talking about toys. We're also
talking about there's another toy nols holding. We're talking about
World War Two. We're talking about Japan because I'll tell you,
even as an adult, you guys, Japan and Korea make
the most amazing toys. I catch myself looking at him online.
(02:57):
You know, absolutely, I mean, you know, certainly when we
were maybe a little older, probably pasted our Ninja Turtles phase,
but not much things like Power Rangers, you know, complete
Japanese exports that just kind of took America by storm,
and then those action figures became massively popular, not to
mention things like Pokemon and all. I'm down the line,
but we'll get there. Yeah, And along the way, we're
(03:19):
going to find that the toy industry was not played
around when it came to the Japanese economy. They actually
the toy industry played a huge role in resuscitating the
postwar Japanese economy. And I guess our story really starts
with a guy named Matsuzo cosuj. Absolutely, this is a
(03:42):
monumental figure, not an action figure, a human figure in
the toy explosion that Japan experienced after a different explosion
that we'll also talk about it. You may know what
we're hinting at there, but let's let's not get to
Kosuge right away. Let's talk a little bit more about
Japan's history with leisure goods and design. You know, any
(04:05):
any any folks out there who were super into Japanese
culture probably are aware of things like bento boxes, you know,
these beautifully little kind of very organized ergonomic displays for
your lunch. You know, where there's little compartments for every
little thing. Like Japan has always had a flare for
design and for like layout and for aesthetics. And when
(04:26):
the US sort of entered Japan, they expected to see,
not that they expected to see something maybe they experienced
in other examples of kind of colonization, you know, maybe
more what what Americans at the time would were colonizing
forces usually describe as backwards civilizations. But instead they found society,
(04:49):
but not only could meet its citizens needs, you know,
daily needs for shelter and food and clothing and all
of that stuff in safety, but also fun little leisure items,
little treasures. Yeah, and this comes to us from Gary
Cross and Gregory Smitz, who wrote a piece called Japan,
the US and the Globalization of Children's consumer culture. What
(05:11):
we're saving, folks, is this esthetic has roots that go
way past, you know, way past the cool little toys
you might see in a store today. And in fact,
these authors say quote boxes, both metaphoric and literal, define
Japanese material culture. They talked about the bento box, as
(05:32):
you mentioned. They also talk about things like the limitations
of literary forms the haiku right three lines of five,
seven and five, and of course yes there are multiple
versions of haiku, but that's the most popular format. And
then they talked about the art of wrapping something and
how the esthetics of a presentation can be as important
(05:54):
as the object itself. You see this reflected too in
things like the traditional ta seram pimonies and the ways
in which a gift might be given in an envelope
or box so elaborate, so impressive, that might actually be
worth more than the contents within the box. And if
you look at this, you see that Western artists began
(06:16):
to pick up on this in the late nineteenth century,
and it triggered some important questions about aesthetics and design.
You know, Whistler van Go all sorts of artists really
got into the artwork of Japanese creators, and they thought
of this as a way of freeing themselves from European style,
(06:36):
which they found a little stuffy stayed and you know,
it's the art we have at home, so let's do
something different. And before long the Japanese esthetics and cultural
norms began to be associated with the very definition of culture.
And you can see this in everything from stationary to
(06:59):
find art, to textiles to fabric honestly all sorts of stuff.
But while Western tastemakers, the influencers of their day were
all about these prints and these glassware pieces and so on,
the real backbone of Japan's growing export industry was toys.
(07:22):
And this, I mean, we're still not even the World
War two. The it's it's pretty nuts to think about
how popular these were. It is it is, and it's
also just nuts in general to think of something that
you know, we as adults, I guess, with our loss
of wonder and all of that that comes with becoming
a boring old adults, something that we might view as frivolous,
(07:43):
like toys, you know, could have such an impact so
early on, you know, you don't even really think of that,
I mean early toys. It's almost like we think of
them as like being made like in the home, or
like just hear a kid play with this stick, you
know what I mean. But it was like they kind
of had cracked the coat on this, as as had
the Germans. You know, Germans were really known for their
engineering and their craftsmanship, and the quality of German toys
(08:07):
were already very much a thing, and you know there
was an awareness around them in Japan, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah.
The way that Matt Alts puts it, in pure invention
is Germany, the Uniting Kingdom in France were in this
three way race to be the number one supplier, giving
(08:28):
the children of the world dolls, rocking horses, and cast
iron soldiers and alt says. Japan watched all this with envy,
and was the cost of World War One that gave
Japan this opening to create their own international export market,
because you know, World War one kind of rough for
European industry, and European toy production was no exception. So
(08:52):
the entire industry tanked during World War One because people
were tried to survive, and in Japan and Britain were
actually allied at the time, correct, that's correct. Yeah, And
because they were allies, Japan's leaders saw this European conflict
as an opportunity to advance their nation in the global order.
(09:19):
They declared war on Germany and Austria nineteen fourteen. And
even though they declared war, the Japanese military didn't do
much more than get rid of some small German garrisons
that were on some islands in the South Pacific, and
then they took over some German occupied territory in China.
Throughout most of the war, Japan devoted its attention to
(09:42):
manufacturing stuff ammunition, uniforms, other staple goods, and they made
bank with us too. Absolutely, they did, like we were saying,
it really was an economic boom, you know, for the
whole country. This was not an insignificant industry at the
very least the beginnings of one. And as we said before,
somewhat inspired by you know, the quality of German toys.
(10:04):
And actually, you know, I've mentioned on the show that
I was once a young German boy and when I
was growing up in Germany, I do remember having really
fine wooden toys and you know, things like a playmobile.
It's a really popular that was obviously later, but it
really was a cultural thing. In Japan was able to
kind of carry that forward and include their own cultural touchdoones,
(10:25):
which will get to in a bit as well. That
wartime reduction and competition allowed some Japanese manufacturers to produce,
to kind of scale their operations right, and then the
value at this point in nineteen fourteen of all Japanese
toy exports tripled, and then in nineteen sixteen it tripled again.
(10:45):
Between nineteen sixteen nineteen twenty, about twenty one million yen
was sort of the cap of that industry. There was
a particular popular kind of breed of toys or flavor
of toys called celluloid toys, which became Japan's thirteenth and
most valuable export commodity during those war years. And this
(11:08):
also comes from Japan the US and the globalization of
childre's consumer culture by Gary Cross and Gregory Smith's and
if we go back to pure invention by Matt Alt,
we see that there's a pretty cool snapshot we can
take from the nineteen fifteen Panama Pacific International Exposition out
in San Francisco. They had tons of like roly Polly,
(11:31):
paper mache, Daruma dolls, miniature paper umbrellas, celluloid figures. Celluloid
figures were one of the biggest export commodities during the
war years for Japan, and they were toys, and they
also had very exquisite, opulent, just so porcelain dolls from
toymakers in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya. The Japanese government really
(11:56):
leaned into this and they wanted to show off Japanese
toys as this not only the new hot thing for
people in the know, but also as an example of
Japan's manufacturing acumen their abilities, and so they would they
would treat this like a piece of diplomacy, and they
were actually able to leap frog Western toy manufacturers by
(12:20):
making new things that were way lower in price because
at the time labor was way cheaper in Japan. Yeah,
and this is something that we've always kind of known
to some degree over here in the States, you know,
made in China, made in Japan. A lot of the
consumer goods that we rely on or just kind of
(12:41):
enjoy have historically been made overseas because of that labor disparity,
you know. And yeah, so for instance, a skilled Japanese
manufacturer toymaker would earn maybe in an entire day, what
an American toymaker would be paid per hour. And US
(13:03):
toy companies got a little bit shook about this. A
matter of fact, in nineteen thirty four, they asked Uncle
Sam for tariffs. They said, we need your help to quote,
stem the invasion of the American market by Japanese toys.
So when they can't get lang, yeah, when they couldn't
compete fairly, they said, okay, you know, cut off the race.
(13:26):
Does the word invasion? You know, they seem a little
mothering and kind of I could picture some crass imagery
associated with a campaign like that, if I'm using my
gross American imagination. Yeah, and there's renewed German competition two right.
At least around this time, Japanese manufacturers also say, hey,
(13:49):
we can't just make a bunch of stuff. We need
to make quality products. And in nineteen twenty seven, the
Ministry of Education in Japan issued a statement saying that
Japanese toys and picture books were inferior to those of
other countries, and they made a commission to investigate and
recommend improvements. That's right in a book called kongu' sorry
(14:14):
Apologies not Japanese native speaker Kanju, perhaps to Kodomo no Kayoku,
which translates to Toys and Children's education. An education professor
at Toyo University named seki Hiroyuki agreed with this assessment,
saying that Japanese children were kind of lagging behind in
(14:35):
their ability to think creatively. Let's just call it like
outside the box. And he said part of the reason
was because of these kind of shoddy toys that were
being made in the country, Because he said, the industry
at this point was pretty much just content like making
kind of knockoffs of some of these other toys that
were coming from other countries, which weren't particularly creative or
(14:58):
mentally stimulating. Right, Yeah, So he said, I said, I
think the kids aren't doing well, and I blame their toys.
That's part of it. And this meant that from the
nineteen twenties on, Japanese toymakers increasingly looked at themselves in
a very serious light. They said, we're not distracting children.
(15:19):
What we're doing is providing a key piece of childhood
development and education. Therefore, don't call us, you know, dollmakers.
We're not just engineers of action figures. We're engineers of
Japan's future, which is a really cool way to look
at it. Yeah, and proved to be quite accurate. You know. Obviously,
(15:40):
we know things like Nintendo and a lot of these
other kind of brands they come out of Japan that
were you know, just took the world by storm, many
of them, like Nintendo, for example. I've always said, and
I think a lot of people agree and say as well,
that they don't need the best graphics in the world.
They don't need to have PS five or Xbox three
(16:00):
six or whatever. The newest Xbox is level graphics because
the design of the games so perfect, so well put together,
and just purely fun. It all comes from this sort
of spirit of design and creativity that we're starting to
see kind of flourish here. I mean, the Nintendo we
is always going to have a special place in my
(16:21):
heart because it's where I played one of the most
beautiful games I've ever played, Okami. Please to check it out, folks.
It's odd, it's so good. I still play the old
school Nintendo games. Yeah, there's there's definitely something to be
said there. You don't have to make a thing very
complicated for it to be beautiful and fund and compelling. However,
(16:46):
you may have heard us allude to wars folks, and
you know, at the time all of this stuff was happening,
they didn't call it World War One. They just called
it the World War and hoped it would never happen again.
There's a key tip to you if you become a
time traveler. Don't give the war's numbers. You'll give yourself away.
(17:06):
Japan again is wrapped up in World War two, right,
and the end of war population in Japan is two
point eight million compared with six point seven million in
nineteen forty. Tokyo is devastated, you know, the atomic bomb
(17:27):
is dropped, massive industries are laid to waste. And this
is where the guy would tease. At the very top,
Matsuzo Kosuja comes into play. Forgive pronunciation. We're not native speakers.
Let's talk a little bit about him. He's born in
eighteen ninety nine in Intifu, which is northeast of Hakaido.
(17:50):
Hakaido is the big the big deally Bop at the
top of Japan. I've been there quite recently. It is.
When I was there, snow was like up to two
feet in places. Yeah, it's it's cold. It's very cold.
It's like if you have contact lenses overnight and you
don't put them somewhere warm, your contact lenses might freeze
(18:14):
in their containers. That's how cold. No, and but and
make sure you realize that before you shove those things
in your eyeballs. I imagine. Yeah, And it's it's an
island that I'd never heard of. I think the name
a Toro food is just I don't know, it's beautiful
for some reason, maybe we kind of think of of
a magical land, and that apparently it was. It was
very much off of the radar until the late seventeenth
(18:34):
century when you started to see it showing up on
maps due to a kind of turf war between I knew,
Japanese and Russian uh you know, factions, I guess, for
control over the territory. It was remote, but it also
was strategically located. It had deep, fertile waters surrounding it,
(18:54):
so it was a good place, you know, for war.
It was a good strategic place to say, you know,
court an imperial carrier fleet which happened in November of
nineteen forty one. That fleet is the one that set
sail for Pearl Harbor. As it turns out, we're not
going to get too into the weeds here because we
need to talk about how our hero became the hero
(19:16):
that we know. Yeah, he definitely was witnessing this with
those authors called a tug of war, and you can
still see it today if you go to rural parts
of Kaido, you go to the islands off hug Kaido.
Russia and Japan both claim them, and it's not uncommon
to see stuff in a couple languages Japanese Russian than English.
(19:39):
So he knows about this stuff. And there's a quote
that stood out that says, over years of tutelage from
elder craftsman, Kasuge mastered the largely unglamorous elements of the
toy trade. So he's learning from the bottom, right. He
has to learn blueprints, planning, how to fit and souder stuff,
(20:00):
how to paint and print designs, and the most important
thing for him to learn was the molds, these chunks
of cold steel that you have to hand tool to
make sheets of tin into the specific shapes for each product.
These are the main hearts. They're the engine of any
tin toy workshop. And so in nineteen twenty two, this
(20:22):
guy's only twenty three years old, he makes his own company,
the Kasuga Toy Manufacturing Company. Nobody's sure exactly how he
got all the resources in the capital he needed to
go independent, but we know that it was tough to
do so because apparently back in the day, if you
were an apprentice to one of these established toymakers, the
(20:46):
only way you could go independent is to work for
your master for a full year without pay and then
maybe they would let you go. Labor laws still had
you know, a work in progress, so you know, we
(21:07):
talked about kind of the handmade, sort of inspired quality
of these toys, and that is exactly, you know, how
he wanted it, Howcasuge wanted it. His company was really
more of like a creative workspace, you know, a creative
environment for developing ideas and building these these things, rather
than the feeling, will say, a factory, and all of
(21:29):
the people that worked there had that kind of same
you know, spirit of inspiration. So there's a lot of
experimenting going on a lot of like you know, trying
new creative ideas. But also you know, they were this
was a business, and they were tending to kind of
have the stuff be able to scale and to sell wholesale.
But then were they so were they like outsourcing their
(21:51):
manufacturing to some degree or like was it all handmade?
It gets a little a little confusing there. Yeah, it
seems like at least a few cases they were kind
of manufacturing the proof of concept or ideas and then
they would I think they played around with approaches, honestly,
and as well as playing around with toy concepts. Sometimes
(22:12):
they would build things to the specifications of these wholesalers.
And then sometimes they would make something that they thought
was really cool but they didn't have the you know,
the manpower to produce, and they would take this prototype,
this proof of concept around to other companies and see
if they could get those companies to pony up for it.
So they're they're like almost like an imprint pitching to
(22:35):
a bigger label. Yeah, I guess that's pretty common actually
with smaller kind of startups too, or like, you know,
you don't always necessarily be hell even with larger companies,
you know, you're sending your designs overseas to be manufactured
or perhaps like you know, the the supply chain you know,
may well be in a different country, and then you
have to send your designs and specifications in a way
(22:57):
that the other, you know, company can then manufacture of
the stuff for you. And I guess it's not until
you get really really, really really massive, too big to
fail massive, that you maybe like own all your own
means of production. So it's all of this tracks. And
he had competitors. We talked about Germany as a German
company called Shuko that created kind of the gold standard
(23:17):
for like clockwork wind up toys, and he really dug
this stuff. He was he had a really great eye
for quality and for creativity, and he loved the work
of a lot of his competitors. But he was not
going to be satisfied with just copying them. That was
never going to be his thing. He even said or
told his employees that he that our whole deal here,
(23:41):
our business here is to make our own designs. Reminds
me of a modern equivalent, you know, in the country
of folks like Hideo Kajima, you know, very very hands
on thinker, kind of forward thinking individuals who have a
very hands on day to day relationship with their company
and with their products. I think his studio ghibli as well.
This is something that really those commonalities stand out. Yeah,
(24:05):
he was on the front lines, took a personal hand
in every single project, and he dreamed up all sorts
of stuff. Some of it was clearly based on day
to day life, like he had a crawling clockwork baby.
Other things were anthropomorphized circus seals, dancing animals. He created
(24:27):
the world's first mass produced toy robot. It was a
boxy pin man named Lilliput, you know, like in Gulliver's Travels,
And his favorite thing automobiles. He loved love making toy autos, Jeeps, sedans,
you name it. He would say, yes, Well, because because
(24:47):
car culture was really becoming kind of mainstreamed at this point, right, Like,
you know, there was a fascination with all things automotive,
you know, I mean, I know you've studied this history
on cars, you know, back back in the day, I
was wondering, like how attractive was that, you know, in
a country like Japan, where I think cars were not
(25:08):
nearly adopted in the same way that they were in
the States. But they were kind of like this, you know,
shiny object that was being seen from afar. It's very cool,
it was very futuristic. It was seen as you know,
the way you would look at a private jet almost.
It's it's a really neat thing. You're right. There were
only sixteen hundred private cars registered in all of Tokyo
(25:32):
in the nineteen thirties nineteen thirty three. And to see
these vehicles, you it would be like you are seeing
something straight out of science fiction. So of course they're
great toys for kids. And you can just imagine how
excited a kid would be if they've played with a
toy blue Streak Sedan right for a few years and
(25:54):
they later see one on the streets of Japan. It's nuts.
It's like when you're a kid go to Disney and
you all of a sudden see the real Uh, what's
a good one? The real Simba, the real Mickey Mouse?
Why not Goofy is definitely one of these kids are
after that? Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah, I love the
real the idea of the real for sure. Uh. And
(26:16):
and again, Disney is another company that has always painstakingly
controlled every little aspect of their brand you know, and
when you go to a Disney theme park you kind
of feel that same um, that same energy, you know.
And you know, I can't speak specifically, but the timing
for Disney being created and a lot of this like
(26:36):
Japanese kind of precision work that even inspired like artists
like Whistler for example, you know, to kind of like
take a step back from some of their classical roots
and maybe be a little more focused on kind of
this like kind of esthetic kind of quality, you know,
of design rather than you know, form over function kind
of I would I would argue that that Walt Disney
(26:58):
had to have been aware of this stuff. Yeah, and
you know, it didn't take long before people in the
toy industry in Japan and the world started calling Matsuzo.
They called him Kosuji the Carman, Cosi the Carman. By
nineteen thirty five, he was kind of a big deal.
He could still pretend it was a little shop, but
(27:20):
he was employing two hundred people. These became the top
ten smiths in all of Tokyo. They played a big
part in making Japan the world's second biggest toymaker, and
most of these toys were not staying in the country.
They were being exported all the way to the United
(27:41):
States and the UK. Again, this was starting to really
be the version of what we've been describing and promising
all along, you know, where this is really becoming a
massive export. It became a very popular phenomenon with its
own identity, right, Like, it's not just the Japanese are
producing a cheaper, more accessible version of something else that's
(28:02):
already out there. Sure they're toys, but they weren't copying anybody.
They were creating something completely new that was based on creativity, design,
and kind of reading the room, you know, globally in
terms of what would be popular. You know, I love that.
I think it's a really inspiring thing to read. Yeah,
and their neck and neck with Germany. For a while,
(28:25):
Japan was poised to become the number one toymaker in
the world, but in nineteen thirty eight, the Japanese economy
ground to a halt. They had to pumpets breaks. The
protests over Japan's invasion of China and the atrocities they
were committing led to a lot of economic sanctions that
(28:48):
had a huge impact on the country. The Prime Minister said, look,
we're going to build a new order in East Asia.
Parliament past the National Mobilization Law, which gave gave the
ruling structure, the Prime minister the ability to set prices,
put in rations, and draft people into forced labor. This
(29:08):
was the end of democratic rule in Japan. The whole
nation went to war. What's the toymaker to do? We'll
talk about turning the clock back, you know, or the
the clockwork toy back, you know. I mean, this is guy,
but we have to have been such a heartbreaking letdown
for Cousuga, who is all about inclusivity, you know, who's
all about like reaching out into the global world, you know,
(29:30):
outside of Japan, and now all of a sudden getting
pulled back into that, into this isolation, you know. And
and then to me, I mean again, maybe I'm romanticizing
this guy a little bit, but to me it feels
almost like, yeah, sure, there's there's money, and there's there's
business to be considered, but I don't know, this guy
just could that really just wanted to spread like joy,
(29:50):
you know, as far as he possibly could, someone who
was driven by inspiration just as much as as monetization. Yeah,
And the authorities ordered Kusuge to stop making toys. They said,
take your presses, retool them so that you can help
the warfare. We need you to stamp out casinges for
bomb fuses instead. And the streets get plastered with signs
(30:13):
saying stuff like luxuries the enemy, and housewives are getting
shamed in public for getting their hair done, for like
getting perms. So how could you make toys at a
time like this? And they took down the sign that
said toy manufacturing. They put up another sign that said
precision fabrication, just to you know, to go with the
(30:37):
flow for the company to survive. And a lot of terrible,
horrific things happen in World War Two. Ultimately, Japan's surrenders
in August of nineteen forty five. Kasuge stays put. There's
not much of a Tokyo to go back to. He
can't return home because the Soviet Union has taken over
(30:59):
these disputed islands in Hokkaido, and Kyoto was Japan's only
metro center still standing. So that's where he sets up
christ j Toy Works, and holy smokes, it happened again.
We are going to have to make this tin type
car ride a two parter. It's going to be an
(31:21):
audio road trip, because Noel, the story is just too interesting.
An audio road trip in tiny vehicles. I'm totally okay
with that. In the meantime, thanks to research associate extraordinaires
Zach Doctor, z Williams, Jonathan Strickland, the Christ Ever mayhe Rain,
and thanks of course to Alex Williams. Thanks to Eves Jeff,
(31:41):
thanks to Christopher Hasiotis, thanks to you for tuning in,
and Noel, Thank you man. It's been a pleasure. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from My
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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